Archive for the ‘POLITICS’ Category
Partnhe Wali Gali, Old Delhi. Pic Courtesy: Krishna 1951 Lanka Reviewed has a post on my favorite street food joint in Colombo, “Burger King” in Malay street. Here’s a brief about the setting from LR,Mr Burger King is imaginatively located in Colombo 2…
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Swaminathan Aiyar offers an explaination:I was asked once by a Chinese magazine for a ‘short’ article of 3,000 words on the Indian economy. I protested that 3,000 words was much too long. ‘‘No,’’ said the Chinese editor, ‘‘when translat…
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Last Wednesday, Anila Banradanike’s column for FT focused on Sri Lanka’s ‘Brain Drain’ particularly among urban youth. She complains, rightly, that there are no credible statistics available on how many people go abroad for studies. I agree, all I can…
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The story is from Saturday’s Daily Mirror,The Sri Lanka Teachers’ Union warned yesterday that it would go for a massive trade union action by bringing all teachers together.Charging the government had hoodwinked the union and the general public by st…
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The World Youth Day Walk was held as part of the World Youth Congress in Quebec, Canada on the 12th of September 2008. The walk consisting of more than 600 young people from 120 countries started at the University of Laval, which played host for the WYC and ended in a rally at Old, Quebec. […]
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David Blacker has an interview with a Private Military Contractor, who’s Sri Lankan-based company operates in Iraq. Interesting.
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As regular readers of this blog know, we are officially looking for new people to join Beyond Borders. If you know anyone between the ages of 18 to 25 who might be interested in the work we do, Please forward the following information and help us spread the word.
Three themes: Identity, Diversity and Active Global […]
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Via Hilal’s blog, here’s a very entertaining video of making something out of a washed out cricket match. It’s 13 minutes, but well worth it. The Direct link to the video is here. Also see this crickinfo post, which kind of narrates what went on.Hilal …
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Finally, a Sri Lankan judge makes an excellent proposal. From LBO:A top Sri Lankan judge has called for laws such as a freedom of information act to enable people greater access to information to create an ‘informed public’ that is essential for a demo…
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The Mises blog points me to this interactive map showing American troop levels. Apparently, Sri Lanka has 7 troops and U.S. pretty much has a presence in everywhere, execept for like 7 countries. Must confess though, I haven’t seen a single U.S. troop …
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The Mises blog points me to this interactive map showing American troop levels. Apparently, Sri Lanka has 7 troops and U.S. pretty much has a presence in everywhere, execept for like 7 countries. Must confess though, I haven’t seen a single U.S. troop …
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For the background, see this and especially this.
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The museum of Communism in Prague. The entrance is through McDonald’s. (A pic by udijw)The Rajapakse Administration won, despite some irregularities, a genuine victory over the UNP in the recent provincial council elections. Perhaps the most exciting…
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We won’t pay you though.
We are doing another recruitment drive. We are looking for energetic and passionate young people to join hands with us. You can become part of the team and support us with what we do. Have and idea for a new project? Give it wings with us. After all, we are a […]
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Scot Adams makes the case. (yes, he’s the guy who created Dilbert, but he majored in economics in college and nowadays runs a stellar blog). Scott writes,If a weather expert tells you what the weather will be on a specific day next year, you can safe…
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Apparently, theere’s a Boobs on Bikes Parade in Auckland, New Zealand. Some kiwi conservatives wants to stop that on legal grounds. But here’s what the judge had to say,It is topless people, men and women, in a public place, which is perfectly legal un…
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I am in London stuck in a 12 hour transit, catching up on some reading I’ve missed during the last couple of weeks. There’s a bunch of people I know in the city, but the immigration chaps won’t let me go out, because, I’m um, Sri Lankan. In any case, n…
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As Silumina reported Mr Ranjan Ramanayaka was not acting to be injured. Actually the photo that they published in their news paper was digitally edited (Flipped). But they have done it very poorly, if you watch closely at the background you’ll see the…
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The 4th World Youth Congress is now underway. Over 500 of the world’s most dynamic young activists and voluteers in the field of youth-led development from over 100 countries are here for a 12 day summit in Quebec City, Canada.
The congress offers a unique opportunity to meet and work alongside young people who are really doing things and going places. […]
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I’m in Canada for something. Will be travelling from Toronto to Montreal to Quebec City. Blogging will be uncertain for another couple of weeks..
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This is probably not as a result of my earlier post on the subject, but ST economist’s column today addresses the question I posed about an earlier column.
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Ok this may come as a shocker to some and as stale news to some others. Over summer i am interning in a firm in London. I walked in to office this morning with a glass of water and bosa tells me dont drink tap water as it contains excessive female horm…
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This is kinda cool. It let’s you generate your own word cloud for a bunch of text. Here’s mine:It generates the cloud for the current posts in the home page if you give your blog address, you can play with the colors and fonts. Here’s one for Kottu :Go…
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Fox News is now on MTV Channel one. I Just watched O’Reilly Factor, which I used to follow through Fox’s site earlier. It’s good to see good old American-Conservatism on TV, really. Both channels are undoubtedly partisan, one on behalf of the GOP a…
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July usually passes me by without too much notice, beyond the vague worry that there might be a Tiger attack on Colombo, and a few flashbacks to that weekend in 1983. But this time it’s been a bit different. I’ve found myself reliving that day a lo…
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(Pic courtesy: The Daily Mirror)In view of the SAARC summit, the Sri Lankan government decided to demolish the homes of a bunch of poor people living in ‘unauthorized dwellings’. Apparently aesthetics are more important for the government than life and…
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We have had lots of nutty regulations recently. But there’s room for comfort, at least Sri Lanka is not the only place with nutty regulations. Here’s a peanut packet from the U.S:The packaging says : produced in a factory producing peanuts and other n…
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Everybody’s been bitching about the SAARC summit. The government is spending some 2.8 Billion, Colombo is (supposedly) under a draconian security plan, as a part of which a bunch of poor people kicked out from their homes and while their houses were de…
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Ajay Shah has yet another article on India’s inflation. Here’s an important one-liner,Professional economists agree with professional politicians on the importance of low inflation.I think that sums up the case for inflation targeting.I have previously…
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For the past few years, despite high inflation, despite the war, there’s one statistic that the government had been harping about — Sri Lanka’s GDP growth has managed to hover at around 7%.Writing for her regular column in the DM Financial Times, Anil…
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Recently, Sri Lanka’s government decided to impose severe restrictions on the use of mobile phones citing ‘Security reasons’. Anything fly in Sri Lanka these days, if you say ‘national security’.The regulation dictates that all Sri Lankans must carry a…
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Cato’s Johan Norberg has a detailed rebuttal on Naomi Klein’s superficial claims about Milton Friedman and free-market policies made in her book, The shock doctrine. Here’s a video of Norberg explaining how Ms Klein misrepresents what Friedman said: Al…
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Cato’s Johan Norberg has a detailed rebuttal on Naomi Klein’s superficial claims about Milton Friedman and free-market policies made in her book, The shock doctrine. Here’s a video of Norberg explaining how Ms Klein misrepresents what Friedman said: Al…
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Williem Buiter writing for Maverecon blog paints a gloomy picture about a world with $500 oil. He thinks when it comes to Oil prices, “sky is the limit”. With ever increasing demand from places like India and China, he thinks Oil prices will continue t…
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Inspired by Bill Gates’ speech at the World Economic Forum, someone has created a creative capitalism blog with an impressive list of contributors, ranging from Gates to Buffet to this latest piece from Jagdish Bhagwati. Even the late Milton Friedman …
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Prompted by my earlier post on legalizing marijuana, Jack Point thinks that a good way of tackling the problem of hard drugs, such as heroin is for government to give it away for free for addicts and encourage them to voluntary enroll themselves to tre…
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Despite vowing to oppose unauthorized wiretapping legislation, senator Obama decided to flip-flop on the issue and support wiretapping bill anyway. This is now one of many ‘policy shifts’ by Obama scrambling to center of the spectrum after taking a rid…
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“We, the thirty-nine J8 delegates from Barbados, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America believe that it is imperative for G8 leaders to listen to the voices of young people.“
Strong words. Heard words. Repeated words.
About a week back, 39 […]
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Some observations from the TIME magazine,Libertarians are getting ready for the mainstream, and mainstream America may finally be ready for them.The whole thing here.[Link via Hit n Run]
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That’s according to Dialog, Sri Lanka’s largest mobile service provider. They offer a SMS dictionary service, so Poojitha of TimesEye decided to test it with the word ’sober’. Here’s what dialog sent him:More at TimesEye. They seem to have fixed it tho…
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Beyond Borders in New Delhi, India are organizing a two-day workshop on sexual and reprudctive rights on the 19th and 20th of July 2008.
“Reproductive and Sexual Health Education”(RSHE) workshop has been specifically designed for young people of age group 16- 22 years, to enable discussions around the issue of reproductive and sexual health, by making […]
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I was recently reminded by a friend that Sri Lanka actually does have legal access medical Marijuana (Ganja). The practitioners of traditional Ayurvedic medicine are allowed to carry 1kg (figure unconfirmed) amount of Ganja to be used for medicinal pur…
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Rev Jesse Jackson whose oratory and occasionally his politics, I have been accustomed to enjoy got into a soup yesterday for his comments on Obama. For those who are not familiar with the name, Jackson was Martin Luther King’s left hand during the civil right movement days and was the first African American to make any progress at a Presidential […]
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Crosswords in Bangalore. Pic courtesy:Kishore
This last post reminded me how much I rue the fact that Sri Lanka doesn’t have good book stores. The Vijitha Yapa is not really a book store, it’s a small book-shop. There’s no place to just chill, read …
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That’s part of my Gtalk status today. The inability of the (allegedly) Marxist JVP and (supposedly) the main opposition UNP to mobilize enough ‘working class’ for the country-wide strike today told it’s own story. Truth be told, thanks to the financia…
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Ever since Stevens, Levitt and Dubner broke into the scene with their enormously popular Freakonomics, there has been a multitude of popular economics books. Books that uses the tools of economics — the study of incentives, laws of supply and demand, …
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According to a reliable source at the University of Colombo faculty of law, a cup of tea at the University canteen is Rs.2 (less than $ 0.02 USD). He told me this just before purchasing a 100-times more expensive cup from Barista’s.It’s bad enough we h…
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Sri Lanka’s new IGP is an innovative chap. According to the Khaleej Times,Inspector General Jayantha Wickremeratne, who assumed duties last week, says camera phones could play a bigger role in crime busting.“If someone comes to rape you, use your mob…
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Filed Under ( Activism, Democracy, Development, Events-Activities-Announcements, Opinions, POLITICS, Sri Lanka, Youth, Youth Participation, Youth-Culture-Society, Youth-led development) by Deane on July-7-2008
We were most Impressed with the set of (draft) guidelines put together by the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program on the “Principles of Meaningful Youth Participation”. In our work in the sphere of youth-led development both in Sri Lanka and internationally, we have encountered two basic views among young people in their understanding of […]
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I’m usually skeptical of obsessions about trade deficits, which is (to be a bit simplistic) the difference between exports and imports. I think most such worries about the trade deficit comes from the old mercantalist notion which holds that “exports a…
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